I'm Okay With That
by Savage Midnight
Summary: Chloe, Oliver, and the best kind of goodbye.


**Title: **I'm Okay With That (I Am)  
**Author: **Savage Midnight  
**Rating: **PG  
**Disclaimer: **Smallville and all related elements belong to Tollin-Robbins Productions and Warner Bros. Copyright infringement is definitely not intended.  
**Summary: **_They weren't always this and they won't always be this, but for now they simply are, and she's okay with that._ Chloe, Oliver and the best kind of goodbye. Set just before _Justice_.  
**Author's Note: **Dedicated to medie for inspiring me to write this with her awesome Chloe/Ollie fics.

---

It isn't hard to put two and two together. Clark taught her how and she's never forgotten. And the mystery unravels itself.

Clark doesn't need the green suit and the novelty arrows. He's Clark. He could super-speed his way through a rescue and no one would be the wiser.

So Chloe takes the pieces of the puzzle and rearranges them. It isn't that hard. Oliver Queen arrives in Metropolis and a few days later the Green Arrow appears on the radar. Clark stumbles across his identity and hides it from everyone, including her. A few months later, Lois shares her suspicions about Oliver with her and Clark and days after that the boy hero grows a sudden fetish for leather and archery.

He forgets that she was by his side during their hunt for Robin Hood. He forgets a lot of things.

But Chloe knows the lengths Clark will go to in order to protect a secret. She knows how dangerous they can be, how damaging, and she remembers how long he kept his own.

So when the pieces of the puzzle finally slip into place, when she double-checks her facts and checks them again, digs out her file on the Green Arrow and looks, really looks at Lois' drawing and recognises the familiar jaw line, she smiles.

And then she slides the file back into its hiding place, and forgets.

---

Lois grows tired. Of the social events, the busy schedules, the media circus. But most of all she grows tired of the disappearances. She can handle playing the part-time role of Oliver's high-class, low-key girlfriend at the parties and the balls and the conventions. She can even handle the snatched moments between business meetings and business trips. But what Lois can't handle is his disappearing act. She grows tired of sitting alone in a nameless restaurant, waiting and waiting for Oliver to deal with work dilemmas so they can finish dinner. She grows tired of waking up in the night to find him gone. She grows tired of his stuttered excuses, because Lois Lane doesn't do excuses. She's Lois Lane.

She breaks it off the night he goes missing for seven hours and doesn't call. At three in the morning she's concerned. At four she's panicked. At five she's frantic and at six she's out-and-out furious. She rewards his disappearing act with one of her own and doesn't look back.

---

Chloe visits because Lois asks her to. She wants Chloe to tell Oliver that she's not angry anymore, just resigned, and that no amount of gifts and flowers and answering-machine messages is going to change her mind. Lois is done and she wants him to know that.

She asks Chloe to do it because asking Clark would be awkward and unfair and there's no doubt in either of their minds that he would mess it up somehow. So she agrees and ends up in Oliver's apartment looking apologetic and a little embarrassed, shifting from foot to foot and struggling for some way to broach the subject without making the guy flinch.

She asks him how he is and he stares at her for a long time before answering.

"I've been better," he says.

She nods and then sighs and steams ahead, tells him what Lois told her to say, except she softens it a little and tries not to patronise him with platitudes. It's hard, but it's harder for him. He closes his eyes, swallows, and after a long moment he nods.

"Thank you, Miss Sullivan, for telling me."

And then his expression goes blank and he stares passively at his desk. He doesn't say anything else and Chloe takes it as her cue to leave. She moves towards the elevator, steps in, turns around and presses the button.

"Call me Chloe," she says, as the elevator begins to descend.

---

A few weeks later, Chloe tells Clark she knows Oliver's secret. He looks a little surprised at first, forgets for an instant that she's a reporter, that the pieces that were left behind weren't all that hard to slide into place, and that anyone with her knowledge and her brain could figure it out. He's just lucky she's the only one with both.

He looks a little resigned and a little sad when he realises, tells her how he never wanted her to have to shoulder the burden of his secret, never mind Oliver's. He worries and she tells him she can handle it.

She tells him Lois could have handled it, too, if Oliver had trusted her, but it's too late for that now. Oliver's decided to be self-sacrificing and let Lois go, according to Clark.

She doesn't assure him that Oliver's secret is safe with her, because he already knows it is. He knows she won't go running to the papers or to Lois or even to Oliver with the information. That's not how she works.

But he does ask her to visit Oliver, asks her to speak to him. He tells her that Oliver has a right to know that she knows, and he's right.

So she does.

---

She never considered how hard it would be to broach a subject of this magnitude and now she's standing in his apartment again, speechless and awkward and not at all fascinated by the easy way Oliver drops from his handstand and glides over.

"Miss Sullivan," he says, when she still hasn't said anything. And now it looks like she's staring.

She corrects him automatically with an off-handed, "It's Chloe," and then makes a show of studying his apartment. "And do you always greet visitors this way? Half-naked with your legs in the air? Don't tell me it's good for business."

"It is in my line of work," he answers absently and then offers her a seat, which she accepts with a murmured thank you. He sits opposite her, behind his desk, and asks her what he can do for her, but she ignores his question and bounces on his first statement, using it as a tool to pry open the conversation.

"In your line of work... " she muses, and nods once in agreement. "I can see why making sure your ass fits into all that leather would be your main priority."

He leans back into his chair and squints at her in confusion.

"You know," she prods. "Save the day and look pretty doing it?"

He squints harder and she sighs in exasperation, leans forward and explains, "I know you're the Green Arrow, Mr. Queen."

She catches the brief flash of alarm that crosses his face before he recovers smoothly and laughs. "Miss Sullivan--Chloe--" he corrects at her glance. "--I don't know if Lois told you, but we cleared this up months ago. In fact I believe your boyfriend was th--"

"Mr. Queen," she interrupts, smiling politely. "No offense, but you suck at the whole secret identity thing. I had you figured out the second Clark discovered his inner Robin Hood. And no, before you ask, Clark didn't tell me your secret. He did ask me to tell you, though. Figured you deserved to know."

She stares across at him, silent and still behind his desk. She can tell he's already trying to find a way to sweep this all under the rug, but it isn't going to happen. There isn't a rug big enough. So she leans back in her chair and waits patiently for him to absorb and accept.

And then finally he blinks. He opens his mouth to speak and then snaps it shut again. He does this three times before he manages to grasp the art of communication.

"So... " He squints again. "You and Clark... "

"I know his secret, yes," she clarifies. "And I know you know his secret. And he knows I know your secret. So I think we're all caught up now, right?" She looks at him pointedly. "Unless there's anything else?

"No. I think that covers it." He sounds vaguely amused.

"Good!" she enthuses, jumping up from her chair with a bright smile. "Glad we had this talk. I'm gonna go now. Places to be. Secrets to keep. Bye!"

All this is said as she's moving alarmingly fast towards the elevator, Oliver staring after her with a slightly bewildered expression on his face. As she steps into the elevator he calls her name and she pauses for a long second before turning to look at him.

"Call me Oliver," he says, and she smiles and nods and disappears.

---

It's not long after that that her secret count goes from moderate to ridiculously high. Lois approaches her regarding the "weird vibe" that has suddenly popped up between her and Clark. Chloe calls it sexual tension, Lois calls it gross. She commands that Chloe share none of these speculations with Clark.

Chloe doesn't get the chance. Bart appears again in Smallville and drags along with him another bucket-load of secrets. Then there's AC and Victor and a League of some kind and Chloe suddenly becomes a go-between, Ollie's girl Friday, team co-ordinator, whatever. The fact is she ends up with a whole bunch of secrets to keep and no one to talk to.

Because Clark doesn't get it, won't get it. What this means for her. For one day she was more than a reporter, more than research girl. She became someone else, someone with a purpose, someone pushing for something she's always wanted to push for -- the truth.

That's her truth, but she knows how sweet and sickly it would sound if she said it out loud. It's why she doesn't tell Clark. It's why she keeps it to herself.

It's why she visits Oliver.

---

Her visits are never planned. They're more like spare-of-the-moment drop-ins between classes or after work. Sometimes he's busy with business stuff, other times he's busy with League stuff, but occasionally she catches him alone and persuades him to take her for lunch. Or coffee. Or, that one time, to a college football game, but that caused more trouble than it was worth.

Occasionally he asks for her help. Sometimes it's research, sometimes it's not. She digs up blue-prints and tracks down sources. She co-ordinates missions and plays nursemaid when they go wrong.

After a while they fall into a routine. He starts to trust her with the big stuff; the long-term missions, the complex game plans. He lets her make the decisions she needs to and trusts that she can handle it.

It's tiring. She fits it in between classes and work and at one time or another, both of them suffer. She spends more time at Oliver's than she does at home. She's lost track of the amount of times she's fallen asleep on his couch and woken up in his guestroom.

Chloe guesses she's probably spent more time with Oliver in one week than Lois did the whole time they were dating. She feels bad about it for a while, but that's before Lois tells her how she and Clark keep "accidentally" making out.

---

It's not as if she saw it coming. She has a boyfriend and she's not the cheating type.

She blames it on the tequila. She blames it on the fact that, while they had decided to celebrate the success of a mission as a team, said team were, in fact, lightweights. Including herself. Oliver seemed to be the only one fairly capable of holding his drink, both figuratively and literally.

This is why, when Clark and Bart and AC and Victor have gone home, she lays one on him. It's just a smack of her lips against his and then she smiles afterwards and giggles a little before declaring herself "too school for cool", which she decides later on is code for _I'm going to be too hungover to make it to classes tomorrow._

She avoids him like the plague afterward. She uses the time to catch up on her classes and work on her assignments for the Daily Planet.

What was he thinking, anyway, serving alcohol to underage teenagers who were clearly incapable of handling anything stronger than a weak beer.

It's definitely Oliver's fault, she tells herself, happy to pin the blame wherever it may go.

It still doesn't stop her from hiding in the basement when he shows up at work to see her.

---

She knows it's serious when he shows up on campus looking for her. She finds him first, buried in a cluster of over-zealous college girls, and drags him off to the coffee shop around the corner.

"Okay," she says, when they're seated, "you're officially stalking me."

"And you're officially avoiding me," he counters, sipping his coffee and staring at her from over the rim of his cup.

"I'm not avoiding you. I've been busy. With classes and work. I have assignments--"

He cuts her off. "You always have assignments. Doesn't stop you answering your cell once in a while."

She sighs tiredly. She wasn't lying when she said she'd been busy. "What do you want, Oliver?"

"I want you to stop avoiding me. We were drunk. Things happen. Let it go. The team needs you."

She looks at him and he looks back, appearing casually sincere. He really isn't concerned and that's good enough for her.

She smiles and takes a slow sip of her coffee. "Must be serious if I'm getting the infamous Oliver Queen pep-talk," she quips.

Oliver nods gravely, and with a straight face replies, "It is. None of the team can work the coffee machine."

---

It's another few weeks before Chloe realises what it means to be a part of the team. Away missions, week-long absences, long-term research. It's one aspect of the League she can't be involved in. Unlike the rest of them, she has ties here. She has her dad, Clark, college and her job and she's not sure she's ready to give them all up.

But the missions are getting longer and the game plan is growing and it's not long before the local missions become scarce and Chloe is left with little to do in the way of reconnaissance. Her routine breaks and she misses it.

When Oliver and the team return from a two-week mission in Indonesia looking downtrodden, she starts to worry. At first she assumes that the mission hadn't gone as planned, but when Oliver calls her and gravely asks her to meet him at his apartment after classes she knows it's bad.

It is. He has the plans and the blueprints to prove it. He spreads them across his desk and suddenly their missions look like child's play compared to what they're up against. Lex's little projects are far-reaching and far more complex than Oliver had first anticipated, spreading across the map like a disease, and Chloe understands instantly what this means for them.

They're not enough. Their team is too small, too limited, for what needs to be done. They need more recruitments, more teams, more time and energy and resources. And that can only mean one thing.

"You're leaving."

She's known it for a while. It wasn't hard to figure out. This thing is bigger than her, bigger than the team, bigger than Metropolis. And she gets it. She really does.

But it still hurts. Because she knows what's coming next and she knows what her answer will be.

"Come with me. With us. The team needs you."

And he looks at her like he already knows what her answer is going to be. That he chose to ask in spite of this makes her smile.

She shakes her head and answers, with honest regret, "You know I can't. I have school and work, and then there's my dad and--"

"Clark," he finishes with a nod. "I get it." He smiles reassuringly to indicate that he understands and then moves around his desk to stand beside her, hands buried in his pockets. She turns to face him.

"When are you leaving?" she asks softly.

"Tomorrow night."

"Does Clark know?"

He nods and smiles to himself. "I told him the same thing that I told you. That the team needed him."

"Let me guess," she says. "He gave you the same answer."

"Pretty much."

Chloe isn't surprised. The idea of Clark leaving Smallville behind, leaving his mother and Lana and the farm, is an alien one. She knows he's not ready yet, just like she isn't, but she also knows that one day he will be; they both will. But today isn't that day and she's okay with that. She is.

"So!" she enthuses with a slightly-forced smile. "Any plans for your last night in town?"

"Actually, yes," Oliver answers. "I plan on taking you to dinner."

Chloe grins in response and tries to forget how much she's going to miss this when he's gone.

---

He offers to take her anywhere she wants to go. The jet is prepped and ready for take-off, but she talks him into burger and fries at the nearest diner instead. She doesn't want it to feel like a goodbye dinner, she tells him, so together they slide into a squeaky, plastic booth and eat greasy food with their fingers.

Their conversation is nothing new, but it's comforting. There's no talk of the past or the future, only the now, and she's okay with that. She doesn't want reminding of all the things she's giving up, of all the things she could be a part of if she wanted to be. This isn't about what was or what could be, because that's never been them. She and Oliver... they're about what is. They weren't always this and they won't always be this, but for now they simply are, and she's okay with that, too.

She's okay with a lot of things these days, apparently.

Afterwards he drives her back to her dorm and walks her all the way to her door. And she knows that this is the part where they say their goodbyes and promise to keep in touch and while one part of her can't handle the thought of watching him leave, the other part just wants for it to be over. It's a tense, throbbing moment and it makes her anxious.

They stare at each other for a few stretched seconds, as if challenging the other to say the inevitable, and Chloe knows that if she doesn't say something soon then neither of them will. But just as she's about to open her mouth, just as she's about the break the tension with a half-hearted quip, Oliver leans down and kisses her.

And there's nothing chaste about it. This isn't the brush of lips against lips, like last time. This is something else. This is Oliver's mouth on hers, hot and heavy, his tongue sliding against hers, his hands on her face, drawing her closer. She can barely draw breath to gasp and just as she feels the urgent need to catch it, he breaks away and steps back.

"I'll be back, Chloe," he promises, as she stands and stares, breathless and gasping.

And then she watches him walk away.

---

**Two Years Later**

He's resting against her front door the next time she sees him. She's trudging up the stairs to her new apartment, graduation gown slung over her arm, and suddenly he's there and he's waiting for _her_. She pauses when she sees him, keys dangling in her hand. He looks the same as she remembers, if a little tired, and she wonders if the last few years have been worth it.

She hopes to find out and invites him in for coffee, but not before inquiring as to how long he's been stalking her.

"About two years, on and off," he replies off-handedly, and smiles that smile that she'll never be able to forget.

She makes coffee for them both and once settled on the sofa, he begins to fill her in on the last two years. He tells her about everything; the new teams, the missions, how much progress they've made. The League has grown and now it stretches from one part of the world to the other.

There's pride in his voice when he talks about it and the more he says the less tired he looks. He speaks more solemnly about their failures, their losses, but with a hint of acceptance, as if he knew it would be hard but is still willing to fight in spite of it. And Chloe is awed by him.

And then, when he's finished, he pauses briefly and asks, "How have you been?", and it's suddenly her turn to fill in the blanks.

So she tells him. About school and the Planet, about Clark and Lois and her dad. It's a good story to tell, not nearly as many bad bits in it as she thought they would be when the team left. Yet no matter how she tells it, she still feels like there's a part missing.

That's why, instead of waiting for him to ask what she's going to do next, she cuts straight to the point and says in a simple, direct tone, "Ask me. Ask me and I'll say yes."

Oliver stares at her for a long second, hopeful and wary, and she thinks she catches relief in his gaze. She doesn't know, isn't sure, but that's okay, because after another long second Oliver smiles and says, with a hint of excitement, "Are you ready for this?"

He didn't really need to ask, and she doesn't really need to answer, because they both know she is. And it wasn't always this way and it won't always be this way, but for now it's _their_ way.

And she's definitely okay with that.


End file.
